Glasshouse Part 4

In public, Iam working hard at being a different person. I donat want anyone to figure out that Iam building an a.r.s.enal.

The ladies of our cohorta"which means Jen, Angel, me, and Alice, because Ca.s.s still isnat allowed out in public by her husbanda"meet up for lunch three times a week. I donat ask after Ca.s.s because I donat want Jen to get the idea that Iam interested in her. Shead peg it as a weakness and try to figure out how to exploit it. I donat want her to get any kind of handle of me, so I dress up and meet them at a restaurant or cafe, and smile and listen politely as they discuss what their husbands are doing or the latest gossip about their neighbors. The nine other houses on my road are standing vacant, waiting for the next cohorts of test subjects to arrive, but thatas unusuala"I gather the others live near to people from other cohorts, and thereas a rich sea of gossip lapping around the tide pools of suburban anomie.

aI think we can make some mileage against cohort three,a Jen says one day, over a Spanish omelet dusted with paprika. She sounds cunning.

aYou do?a Angel asks anxiously.

aYes.a Jen looks smug.

aDo tell.a Alice puts her fork down in the wreckage of her Caesar salad. Sheas trying to look interested, but she canat fool me. Jen casts her a sharp look, then stabs her omelet.

aEsther and Mal live at the other end of Lakeside View from me and Chris.a A piece of omelet quivers on the end of her fork, impaled for our attention. Jen chews reflectively. aIave noticed Esther watching me from their garden, some mornings. So I called a taxi to go shopping, then had it circle round and drop me off just beyond the tunnel at the other end of the road. Funny who you see in the area.a She smiles, exposing perfect raptor-sharp teeth.

aWho?a asks Alice, obliging her with an audience.

aShe goes in, and about ten minutes later Phil turns up by taxi. He sends it away and rings the doorbell. Leaves an hour or two later.a Angel tut-tuts disapprovingly. Alice just looks faintly disgusted.

aDonat you see?a asks Jen. aItas not public. That gives us leverage.a She spears a broccoli stem, dismembers it a branch at a time, tearing with her teeth. aThereas a word for it. Adultery. Itas not negatively scored as such, as long as itas secret. But if it comes outa"a aWe know,a Angel interrupts. aSo whya"a aBecause weare not part of cohort three. Esther and Mal and Phil are all in cohort three. The, ah, peer pressure has to be applied by your peers. So this gives us leverage over Esther and Phil. If we tell Mal, they lose points big-time.a aI donat feel so good,a I say, putting my knife down and pus.h.i.+ng my chair back from the table. aNeed some fresh air.a aWas it something I said?a asks Jen, casually concerned.

Iam getting better at lying with a straight face. I donat think I used to be good at it, but spending too much time around Jen is giving me a crash course in mendacity. aNothing to do with youa"must be something I ate,a I say as I stand up.

Iam trying not to stand out, trying not to offend Jen or the others, and trying not to look eccentric in public, but there are limits to what I will put up with. Being tacitly enlisted in a conspiracy to blackmail is too much. Iall have to smile at them tomorrow or the day after, but right now I want to be alone. So I go outside, where a gentle breeze is blowing, and I walk to the end of the block and cross the road. Thereas very little traffic (none of us real humans drive vehiclesa"itas far too dangerous), and the zombies are configured to give right of way to pedestrians, so I manage to get into the park reasonably fast.

The park is a semidomesticated biome. The gra.s.s is neatly trimmed, the large deciduous plants are carefully pruned, and the small stream of water that meanders through it is tamed and can be crossed by numerous footbridges. It has the big advantage that at this time of day itas nearly empty, except for the zombie groundsman and perhaps a couple of wives with nothing better to do with their time. I walk along the stone path that leads from the edge of the downtown block toward the small coppice on the edge of the boating lake.

I gradually calm down as I near the side of the lake. Itas simulating a sunny day with a little high cloud and a lazy breeze, just occasionally getting up enough speed to cool my skin through my costume. Apart from the incessant machinelike twitter of the fist-sized dinosaurs in the trees, itas quite peaceful. Sometimes I can almost bring myself to forget the perpetual simmering sense of anger and humiliation that Jen seems to thrive on inducing in the rest of us.

However much I try to, I canat put myself in their shoes. Itas as if they donat realize that you can game the system by ignoring it, by refusing to partic.i.p.ate, as well as by going along with the overt rewards and punishments. Theyave all unconsciously decided to obey the arbitrary pressure toward gender part.i.tioning, and they wonat be content unless everyone else conforms and competes for the same rewards. Was it like this for real dark ages females, created as random victims of genetic determinism rather than volunteers in an experiment enforced by explicit rewards and penalties? If so, Iam lucky: Iave only got another three years of it.

Being a wife is a lonely business. Sam and I lead largely independent lives. He goes to work in the morning, and I only see him in the evenings, when heas tired, or on Sundays. On Sundays we go to Church, bound together by our mutual fear of being singled out for opprobrium, and afterward we go home together and try to remind each other that the score wh.o.r.esa"who slavishly chase after every hint of right behavior that Fiore dropsa"are not the most intelligent or reasonable people. We have an uphill struggle at times.

Itas a shame Samas a male, and a shame that the internal dynamics of this compressed community have set up this artificial barrier between us. I have a feeling that if we werenat under so much external pressure, I could get to like him.

And then thereas Ca.s.s, who was at Church last Sunday.

We live in a really small, tightly constrained and controlled synthetic world, and there are some aspects of the way itas organized that make its artificiality glaringly obvious. For example, we donat have fas.h.i.+ons, not in the sense of spontaneous design creativity that sp.a.w.ns waves of imitation and recomplication. (Creativity is a scarce resource at the best of times, and with barely a hundred of us living here so far, there just isnat enough to go round.) What we do have is a strangely frenetic ersatz fas.h.i.+on industry, in the form of whateveras in the shops. Somewhere thereas a surviving catalogue of styles from the dark ages, probably compiled from a museum, and the shops change their contents regularly, compelling us to buy new stuff every few cycles or fall out of date. (Itas another conformity-promoting measure: forget to update your wardrobe contents, leave yourself open to criticism.) This month hats are in fas.h.i.+on, ridiculous confections with wide brims and net veils that shadow the face. I can cope with hats, although I donat like the brims or the veilsa"I keep catching them on things, and they get in the way.

But let me get back to Ca.s.s, the subject of my hopes and worries . . .

Iam standing beside Sam as usual, holding the hymnbook and moving my lips, letting my eyes rove around the other side of the aisle. A new cohort arrived last week and the Church is packeda"theyall have to extend it soon. Iam trying to pick out the newcomers because I donat want to get them mixed up with the older cohorts. Maybe itas a bit of Jenas calculated cynicism rubbing off on me, but Iam learning to guess someoneas degree of alienation by how long theyave been around. I have a feeling I might be able to make some allies among the new intake as long as I look for them early in the conditioning cycle, before the score wh.o.r.es get their claws in.

For some reason Mick is sitting witha"standing amonga"the new folks this week, and I automatically glance at the woman to his left. I do a double take. Sheas wearing a long-sleeved blue dress with a high collar, and a hat with a black veil that covers her face. Sheas got lots of makeup smeared around her eyes. Her mouth is a red slash, and her cheeks are colorless. But itas definitely Ca.s.s, and sheas holding the hymnbook as if sheas never seen one before.

Is that you, Kay? I wonder, tantalized by her presence. Iave been holding on to that promise Kay extracted from mea"aYouall look for me inside, wonat you?a And Ca.s.s . . . she knows ice ghoul society. If Mick wasnat so crazy with jealousy that he doesnat want her out in public, ifa"

Sam nudges me discreetly in the ribs. People are closing their hymnbooks and sitting down. I hastily follow suit. (Donat want anyone to notice me, donat want to attract unwanted attention.) aDearly beloved,a drones Fiore, awe are a loving congregation, and today we welcome to our bosom the new cohort of Eddie, Pat, Jonaa"and he names seven other fresh victimsa"awho I am sure you will take under your wings and strive to befriend in due course. We also offer a belated welcome to sleepyhead Ca.s.s, who has finally deigned to grace us with her fragrant presence . . .a He twitters on in like vein for some time, preaching a sermon of saccharine subordination ill.u.s.trated periodically with some anecdote of misdoing. Vern, it seems, got falling-down drunk and vomited in Main Street two nights ago, while Erica and Kate had a stand-up fight so violent that it put Erica in hospital, along with Greg and Brook, who tried to pull Kate off her. Kate is now in prison, paying the price for her outburst in days on bread and nights on water, and by the time Fiore gets through excoriating her, thereas an angry undercurrent of disapproval in the congregation. I glance sidelong at Ca.s.s, trying not to be too obtrusive about it. I canat make out her facea"the veil shadows her expression effectivelya"but Iam pretty sure that if I could see her, shead look frightened. Her shoulders are set, defensive, and sheas hunched slightly away from Mick.

Once we go outside into the open air, I grab a gla.s.s of wine and down it rapidly, keeping close to Sam. Sam watches me, worried. aSomething wrong?a aYes. No. Iam not sure.a There are b.u.t.terflies in my stomach. Ca.s.s is the most isolated of the wives in Cohort Four, the one who hasnat been allowed out anywherea"and could Sam stop me doing anything if I felt like it? Mick is poison, not the subtle social toxin of a Jen, but the forthright venom of a stinging insect, brutal and direct. aThereas something I want to check out. Iall be back in a few minutes, okay?a aReevea"take care?a I meet his eyes. Heas concerned! I realize. Abashed, I nod, then slide away toward the front of the Church and the main entrance.

Mick is talking to a little knot of hard-looking men, wiry muscles and close-cropped haira"guys I see digging or operating incredibly noisy machinery, chewing up the roads then filling them in againa"heas gesticulating wildly. A couple of the Church attendants stand nearby, and thereare a couple of women waiting in the doorway. I sidle toward the front door and go inside. The Church has emptied out, and thereas only one person still there, loitering near the back pew.

aKay? Ca.s.s?a I ask.

She looks at me. aR-Reeve?a Itas dark, and I canat be sure but thereas something about her heavy eye shadow that makes me think of bruising. Her dress would effectively conceal signs of violence if Mickas been beating her. aAre you all right?a I ask.

Her eyes turn toward the entrance. aNo,a she whispers. aListen, heasa"donat get involved. All right? I donat need your help. Stay away from me.a Her voice quavers with a fine edge of fear.

aI promised Iad look for you in here,a I say.

aDonat.a She shakes her head. aHeall kill me, do you realize that? If he thinks Iave been talking to anyonea"a aBut we can protect you! All you have to do is ask, and weall get you out of there and keep him away from you.a I might as well not have bothered talking to her: she shakes her head and backs toward the door, her shoes clacking on the stone floor. Behind the veil, her face isnat simply frightened, itas terrified. And the white powder on her cheek isnat quite enough to conceal the ivory stain of old bruising.

Mick is waiting outside. If he sees me emerging after Ca.s.s, heall probably go nuts. And Iam beginning to wonder if Iam right about her. When I called her Kay, she showed no sign of recognition. But would she? Kay is an alias, after all, and with her being just out of memory surgery, and me not being Robin but Reeve in this hall of mirrorsa"if after these tendays someone called me Robin, would I realize they were talking to me at first?

I glance around frustratedly, wondering if thereas a back exit. Iam alone in the Church nave. Itas not my favorite place, you understand, but right now it lacks the almost palpable sense of hostility it exudes when weare all herded together in our Sunday best, wondering whoas going to be todayas sacrificial victim. Waiting for Mick to lose interest and leave, I walk around the front of the big room, trying to get a new perspective on things.

Iave never been forward of the pews before. What does Fiore keep in his lectern? I wonder, walking toward the altar. The lectern, seen from behind, is quite disappointinga"itas just a slab of carved wood with a shelf set in it. There are a couple of paper books filed there, but no robocatamite to account for Fioreas peculiar mannerisms. The altar is also pretty boring. Itas a slab of smoothly polished stone, carved into neatly rectilinear lines. The symbols of the faith, the sword and the chalice, sit atop a metal rack in the middle of the purple-dyed cloth that covers the stone. I look closer, intrigued by the sword. Itas an odd-looking thing. The blade is dead straight, with a totally squared-off tip, and itas about a centimeter thick. With no edge on it and no taper it looks more like a mirror-polished billet of steel than a blade. Itas got a basket hilt and a gray, roughened grip, suggesting a functional design rather than a decorative one. Something nags at me, an insistent phantom memory stump itching where a real one has been amputated. Iam certain Iave seen a sword like this before. There are faint rectangular grooves in the outer surface of the basket, as if something has been removed. And the flat aedgea of the blade isnat quite righta"it s.h.i.+nes with the l.u.s.ter of fine steel, but thereas also a faint rainbow sheen, a diffractive speckling at the edge of my gaze.

I break out in a cold sweat. My blouse feels like ice against the chill of my skin as I straighten up and hastily head for the small door thatas visible on this side of the organistas bench. I donat want to be caught here, not now! Someone is having a little joke with us, and I feel sick to my heart at the thought that it might be Fiore, or his boss, Yourdon the Bishop. Theyare playing with us, and this is the proof. Who can I tell? Most people here wouldnat understand, and those that dida"weave got no way out, not unless the experimenters agree to release us early. But the exit leads straight back into the clinics of the hospitaler-confessors, and I have a horrible gut-deep feeling that theyare involved in this. Certainly theyare implicated.

Iave got to get out of here, I realize, aghast. The thing is, Iave seen swords like that before. Vorpal blades, they call them, Iam not sure why. This oneas obviously decommissioned, but how did it get here? They donat rely on the edge or point to cut, thatas not what theyare for. They belonged to, toa"Who did they belong to? I rack my brains, trying to find the source of this terrible conviction that I stand in the presence of something utterly evil, something that doesnat belong in any experimental polity, a stink of livid corruption. But my treacherous memory lets me down again, and as I batter myself against the closed door of my own history, I walk back into the light outside, blinking and wondering if I might be wrong after all. Wrong about Ca.s.s being Kay. Wrong about Mick being violent. Wrong about the sword and the chalice. Wrong about who and what I am . . .

7.

Bottom.

TIME pa.s.ses glacially slowly. I donat say anything to Sam about the events in Church, not about Ca.s.sas black eye nor the Vorpal blade on the Church altar. Sam is comfortable to live with, happy to listen to my depressive chatter about the womenas world, but thereas always the worm of worry gnawing at the back of my mind: Can I trust him? I want to, but I canat be sure he isnat one of my pursuers. Itas a horrible dilemma, the risk/trust trade-off. So I donat talk about what I do in the garage, or on the bas.e.m.e.nt exercise machine, and he doesnat volunteer much information about what he does at work. A couple of the ladies who lunch are talking about organizing dinner parties, but if we invited ourselves into that kind of social circle theyad expect us to reciprocate and the stress would bea"well, I donat think either of us is up to it. So we live our lonely lives in each otheras back pockets, and I worry about Ca.s.s, and Sam reads a lot and watches TV, trying to understand the ancients.

When we get home after the abortive meeting in Church, I use my netlink to check our groupas public points. Jen is leading on social connectedness, while Alice is second on that scorea"her helping me with clothes seems to be good for her. To my surprise I see that Iam at the bottom of the cohort. Thereas an activity breakdown and it looks like everyone else is having s.e.x with their partner: Forming stable relations.h.i.+ps is a good way to jack up your score, easy points. I backtrack a week or two and see that Ca.s.s is regularly active with Mick.

For some reason I find this unaccountably depressing. The others are watching, and Iam supposed to be involved with Sam, and I donat want to do anything that might give Jen any sense of satisfaction whatsoever. Itas an immature att.i.tude, but Iam really conscious of the fact that theyare keeping an eye on my score, waiting for me to surrender. Waiting for me to give Sam what they think he ought to want. Too bad they donat really know us.

ABOUT two weeks later I finally reach the end of my tether. Itas a hot, tiresome Tuesday evening. Iave spent the morning exercising outdoorsa"there are still no neighbors, although a couple of families are due to move in when the next cohort arrives in a couple of weeksa timea"and then worked in the garage all afternoon. Iam trying to relearn welding the hard way, and Iam lucky not to have burned my arm off or electrocuted myself so far.

I have vague recollections of having done this stuff a long time ago, in gigaseconds past, but itas so long ago that the memories are all second-hand and Iave clearly forgotten almost everything I knew. Thereas something wrong with my technique, and the pieces of spring steel Iam trying to make into a single fabrication are going brittle around the weld. I try bending the last one in the vise and the join Iave just spent an hour working on snaps and small fragments go flying. If I was standing a bit farther over to the left, I could have got one in the eye. As it is, I get a nasty shock and go inside to try to sort our dinner out, because Sam is usually back from work around now, and if left to his own devices, heall flop down in front of the television rather than sorting out food for both of us.

So Iam in the kitchen all on my own, rummaging through the frozen packages in the freezer cupboard for something we both eat, and I manage to drop a pizza box on the floor. It splits open and the contents spill everywhere. Itas one of those moments when the whole universe comes spinning down on the top of your head, and you realize how alone and isolated you are, and all your problems seem to laugh at you. Who do I think Iam kidding? I ask myself, and I burst into tears on the spot.

Iam trapped in a wholly inadequate body, with only patchy memories of whoever I used to be left to prod me along in search of a better life. Iam trapped in a fun-house mirror reflection of a historical society where everyone was crazy by default, driven mad by irrational laws and meaningless customs. Here I am, thinking I remember being in rehab, reading a letter written to myself by an earlier versiona"and how do I know I wrote the letter to myself? I donat even remember doing it! For all I know itas a confabulation, my own bored attempt to inject some excitement into a life totally sapped of interest. Certainly the rant about people who are out to kill me seems increasingly implausible and distanta"outright unbelievable, if not for the man with the wire.

I canat remember any reasons why anyone would want me dead. And even a half-competent trainee a.s.sa.s.sin would find killing me a trivial challenge at best, right now. I canat even put a frozen pizza in a microwave oven without dropping it on the floor. Iam spending my spare hours in the garage trying to weld together a crossbow and busily planning to make myself a sword when the bad guys, if theyare real, are running a panopticona"a total surveillance societya"and have weapons like the one on the Church altar, edged with the laser-speckling strangeness of supercondensates, waveguides for wormhole generators. Knives that can cut s.p.a.ce-time. Theyall come for me in the clear light of day, and theyall be backed by the whole police state panoply of memory editors and existential programmers. Thereas nowhere for me to run, no way out except through the T-gates controlled by the experimenters, and no way in bar the same, and I donat even know if Iave lost Kay, or if Kay is Ca.s.s or someone else entirely, and Iam not sure why I let Piccolo-47 talk me into coming here. All Iave got are my memories, and I canat even trust them.

I feel helpless and lost and very, very small, and I stare at the pizza through a blurring veil of tears, and right then I hear the front door lock click to itself and footsteps in the front hall, and itas more than I can bear.

Sam finds me in the kitchen, sobbing as I fumble around for the dustpan.

aWhatas wrong?a He stands in the doorway looking at me, a bewildered expression on his face.

aIam, Ia"a I manage to get the box into the trash, then drop the brush on top of it. aNothing.a aIt canat be nothing,a he insists, logically enough.

aI donat want to talk about it.a I sniff and wipe my eyes on the back of my sleeve, embarra.s.sed and hating myself for this display of weakness. aItas not importanta"a aCome on.a His arm is around my shoulders, comforting. aCome on, out of here.a aOkay.a He leads me out of the kitchen and into the living room and over to the big gla.s.s windows. I watch, not really comprehending, as he opens one of them. Floor to ceiling, it forms a door in its own right, a door into the back garden. aCome on,a he says, walking out onto the lawn.

I follow him outside. The gra.s.s is getting long. What do you want? I wonder.

aSit down,a he says. I blink and look at the bench.

aOh, okay.a I sniff again.

aWait here,a he says. He vanishes back into the house, leaving me alone with my stupid and stupefying sense of inadequacy. I stare at the gra.s.s. Itas moist (we had a scheduled precipitation at lunchtime, water drizzling gently from a million tiny nozzles embedded in the sky), and a snail is inching its way laboriously up a stem, close to my feet. Not far away thereas another one. Itas a good time for mollusks, who haul their world around with them, self-contained. I feel a momentary flash of envy. Here I am, trapped inside the biggest snail sh.e.l.l anyone can imagine, a snail sh.e.l.l made of gla.s.s that exposes everything we do to the monitors and probes of the experimenters. And in my hubris I think I can actually crawl out of my sh.e.l.l, escape into my own ident.i.tya"

Sam is holding something out to me. aHere, have a drink.a I take the tumbler. Itas blue gla.s.s, with a fizz of bubbles trapped in the weighted base and a clear liquid half-filling it. I sniff a bouquet of bitters and lemon.

aGo on, it wonat poison you.a I raise my gla.s.s and take a mouthful. Gin and tonic, some submerged ghost of memory tells me. aThanks.a I sniff. He pours himself one, too. aIam sorry.a aWhat for?a he asks, as he sits down next to me. Heas shed his jacket and necktie, and he moves as if heas weary, as if heas got my troubles.

aIam a dead loss.a I shrug. aIt just got too much for me.a aYouare not a dead loss.a I look at him sharply, then have to sniff again. I wish I could get my sinuses fixed. aYes I am. Iam wholly dependent on youa"without your job, what would I do? Iam weak and small and badly coordinated, and I canat even cook a pizza for supper without dropping it all over the floor. And, and . . .a Sam takes another mouthful. aLook,a he says, pointing at the garden. aYouave got this. All day.a He shakes his head. aI get to sit in an office full of zombies and spend my time proofreading gibberish. Thereas always more make-work for me, texts to check for errors. It makes my head hurt. Youave at least got this.a He looks at me, a guarded, odd look that makes me wonder what he sees. aAnd whatever it is youare doing in the garage.a aIa"a aI donat mean to pry,a he says, looking away shyly.

aItas not secret,a I say. I swallow some more of my drink. aIam making stuff.a I nearly add, Itas a hobby, but that would be a lie. And the one person I havenat actively lied to so far is Sam. Iave got a feeling that if I start lying to him now, Iall be crossing some sort of irrevocable line. With only myself for an anchor, and knowing how fallible my memories are, I wonat be able to tell truth from fantasy anymore.

aMaking stuff.a He rolls his gla.s.s between his big hands. aDo you want a job to go to?a he asks.

aA job?a Thatas a surprise and a half. aWhy?a He shrugs. aTo see people. Get out of the house. To meet people other than the score wh.o.r.es, I mean. Theyare getting to you, arenat they?a I nod mutely.

aNot surprising.a He stays tactfully silent while I drain my gla.s.s.

To my surprise, I feel a little better. Get a job! aHow do I find a job?a I ask. aI mean, not being a mana"a aYou phone the Chamber of Commerce and ask for one.a He puts his gla.s.s down. I look at it, see the two snails climbing opposite sides of the same blade of gra.s.s, leaving their iridescent trails of slime. aItas as simple as that. Theyall send a car to pick you up and take you somewhere with room for a body. They didnat run you through the induction course when you arrived, but itas easy enough. I donat know what theyall find for you or how much theyall pay youa"Iad guess a lot less than they pay men, that seems to be how they did things in the dark agesa"but if you find it too boring, you can always phone the CC again and ask for something else.a aA job,a I say, trying the words out for sense. Itas crazy, actually, but no more so than anything else in this world. aI didnat know I could get one.a He shrugs. aItas not illegal or anything.a A sidelong look. aThey just didnat set it up by default. Itas another of those things weare allowed to game if weare smart enough to think of it.a aAnd Iall meet people.a aIt depends where you work.a Sam looks uncertain for a moment. aMost jobs, there are zombies arounda"but they try to keep at least two humans in every workplace. And there are visitors. But itas pretty boring. I really didnat think youad be interested.a aIt canat possibly be as mind-destroying as this!a I clench my hands.

aDonat bet on it.a He shakes his head. aDark ages work was often meaningless, unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous.a aNot as dangerous to my sanity as not doing anything.a aThatas my Reeve.a Sam smiles, a brilliant expression that I donat often see and that makes me really envy the lucky woman he left behind outside the experiment. aIall get you another drink, then go fix dinner. How about we eat out here instead of inside? Just for once.a aIad like that a lot,a I say fervently. aJust for once.a IN the early hours of the morning Iam awakened by one of my recurring nightmares.

I have several different bad dreams. What distinguishes this one is the quality of the imagery in it. Iam a neomorph, male again and roughly orthohuman in body plan, but extensively augmented with mechabolic subsystems from the cellular level up. Instead of intestines, I have a compact fusion gateway cell. I have three hearts to keep my different circulatory fluids moving, skin reinforced with diamond fiber mesh, and I can survive in vacuum for hours. These are all trappings of my role as a soldier in the service of the Linebarger Cats, because I am a tank.

But thatas not what makes the dream a nightmare.

Weare one-point-one megaseconds into the campaign, and even though wea"my unita"donat normally sleep, weare all under the influence of fatigue poisons from nearly twelve consecutive diurns of high-speed maneuvers. Hostilities with this polity commenced as soon as High Command established the orbital elements on one of their better-connected real-s.p.a.ce nodes. The Six Fingers Green Kingdom has been particularly tenacious in its attempts to hold on to its corrupt A-gates, which are still infected with Curious Yellow censorbots and contaminating everyone who pa.s.ses through them. Theyare one of the last hold-outs on the losing side; theyave survived long after the other censors.h.i.+p redoubts succ.u.mbed to our maneuvers by virtue of their fanatically obscurantist network topology and a cunning mesh of internal firewalls. But weave identified the real-s.p.a.ce location of one of their main switches, and that means weave got a node with ma.s.sive fan-out to exploit once we can get our people into it. My unit is on the sharp end.

The a.s.sault vector is one end of a T-gate ten meters in diameter, boosted up to about thirty percent of c and free-falling through the icy outer limits of the cloud of debris...o...b..ting the brown dwarf Epsilon Indi B. EI-B is not much bigger than a gas giant planet, and has a surface temperature of under a thousand degrees absolutea"by the time you get out to its halo, whole light minutes away, the star is almost invisible. Cometary bodies...o...b..t it in chilly isolation, as cold as the depths of interstellar s.p.a.ce.

Our a.s.sault gate is unpowered and stealthy. It drifts through the perimeter defense field of the Six Fingers Green Kingdom orbital in a matter of seconds and skims past the huge cylinder at a range of under fifty kilometers, preposterously close yet very hard to spot. As it flashes by, my unit is one of several who make a high-speed insertion through the distal end of the wormhole. As far as the defenders are concerned, we appear out of empty s.p.a.ce right on their doorstep. And as far as weare concerned, itas a death trap.

It takes us fifty seconds to cover the fifty kilometers to the habitat, decelerating all the way, mashed flat in our acceleration cages as our suits jink and dodge and shed penaids and decoys and graser bombs. We lose eighty percent of our numbers to point defense fire in that fifty-second period. Itas absolute carnage, but even so weare luckya"the only reason any of us survive at all is because weare working for the Linebarger Cats, and the Cats specialize in applied insanity. Everyone knows that only a lunatic would attack across open s.p.a.ce, so the Green Fingers have concentrated ninety percent of their firepower on the inside of their orbital, pointing at the proximal ends of their longjump T-gates, rather than outside on the hub, covering the barren real-s.p.a.ce approaches.

Iam unconscious for most of the approach, my memories of it spooled by sensors on my suit and buffered for instant recall once my meatbody unvitrifies so I can take over. One moment Iam lying down and the suit is closing around me, and the next Iam standing in the wreckage of a compartment aboard the Green Finger orbital, memories of the insane charge alive in my mind as I pull out my sword, slave my blaster nodes to my eyeball trackers, exude more ablative foam, and head for the inhabited s.p.a.ces.

Fast forward: Dealing with the civilians once weave taken the polity is going to be difficult because theyave all been censored by Curious Yellowa"the original version carrying the censors.h.i.+p payload, not the later hacked tools of various inquisitions and cognitive dictators.h.i.+ps. The censors.h.i.+p payload doesnat just delete memories of forbidden thingsa"it tends to leave spores in its victimsa brains and a boot loader in their netlinks, and if they upload into a vulnerable A-gate it can wake up and infect the gate firmware. So we have to round up everyone on board the hab weave just ripped through with swords and blasters, and recycle them through our own crude decontamination gates.

Now, hereas where the dreamlike logic kicks in. Their a.s.sembler gates are the advanced, elegant products of a mature techgnosis. But our A-gates are crude lash-ups, hand-built in a matter of tens of megaseconds using what knowledge we could salvage. We threw them together in a blind hurry when we realized how far the contamination extendeda"throughout all the A-gates of the Republic of Is, basicallya"and theyare messy and inefficient and slow. What weave built works, but it isnat fast. So weare running our a.s.sault gates in half-duplex mode, disa.s.sembling and storing the citizens for subsequent virus scanning and reincarnation. And because we havenat secured all approaches, and because other nodes within the Six Fingers Green Kingdom are fighting back with vicious desperation, we have to move fast.

After about five thousand seconds of collecting struggling civilians and feeding them into the gates, Group Major Nordak calls me with new orders. aThe bodies are slowing us up,a she sends. aJust harvest the heads. Weall resurrect them all when weave got the situation under control.a Thereas a huge crowd of civilians in a holding square on Deck J, milling around in confusion and fear. Two of us are pulling people out of the crowd through a door, telling them itas for outbound processing. Some of them donat want to go, but arguing with tankies in full armor is futile, and they end up coming to us whether they want to or not, contusions and broken limbs the only difference it makes to their eventual fate. We take them through the inner set of doors that donat open until the outer ones are closed. Then all of them get reluctant, when they see Loral and me waiting on the other side of the inner door, with the a.s.sault gate and our swords and the pile of discards.

We take it in turns, alternating, because itas hard, stressful work. I grab a struggling victim, maybe a plump female orthohuman or a scrawny guy who really needs a new bodya"some of them have been living feral, refusing to go through the A-gates for fear of Curious Yellow, until they actually grow olda"and I pinion the victims and lay them down on the slimy blood-slick floor of the room. They usually scream, and in many cases they p.i.s.s themselves as Loral brings his Vorpal sword down on the back of their neck between the C7 and T1 vertebrae. A twitch on the power b.u.t.ton and thereas more blood squirting and splas.h.i.+ng everywhere than you could imagine, and they stop screaming. Loral pulls her sword out and I get off the body and chase the head, which is usually soaking wet, the eyelids twitching with postamputation shock. I throw the head into the A-gate, low and fast as I can, and the gate swallows it and processes the skull and hopefully gets them logged before permanent depolarization and osmotically induced apoptosis can set in. Then Loral grabs the discarded body and slings it onto the heap in the corner, which one of our fellow special action troops carts away on a pallet loader every so often, while I flail at the floor with a broom in a losing battle to stop the blood puddling around our feet.

Itas a disgusting and unpleasant job, and even though weave gotten into the swing of it and are working as fast as we can, weare only averaging one civilian every fifty seconds. Weave been working for a hundred kiloseconds now, one of eight teams on the joba"processing maybe sixteen thousand people a diurn between us. And itas just my bitter bad luck that when the doors open and the guys on the other side fling the next body at us, kicking and screaming at the top of their lungs, itas my turn to use the sword and Loralas to hold them down and Iam already raising the blade when I look at the terrified face and depending on which variation of the nightmare this is I see that itas my own, or worsea"

a"Kayasa"

a"and Iam sitting up swallowing a scream and someone is cradling me in his arms and Iam covered in chilly sweat and shuddering uncontrollably. I slowly realize Iam in bed, and Iave just kicked off the comforter. Thereas moonlight outside the window, and Iam in YFH-Polity and no matter how bad things are by day, they canat hold a candle to how bad things get in my dreams, and I whimper softly in the back of my throat.

aItas all right now, youare awake, they canat hurt you.a Sam strokes my shoulders. I lean against him and manage to turn the whimper into a sigh. My heart is pounding like one of the jackhammers they use to repair the roads, and my skin is clammy. His arm tightens around me. aWould you like to talk about it?a he murmurs.

aItasaa"awfula"aa recurring dream. Memoriesaa"inadequately redacted, I thinka"afrom an earlier life. What I wanted to be rid of, coming back to haunt me.a I speak haltingly because my mouth feels musty, and Iam not entirely awake, just frightened out of sleep by the shadows of my own past. Whatas he doing in here?

aYou were thras.h.i.+ng around, moaning and muttering in your sleep,a he says. aI was worried you were having a seizure.a Itas not unheard of, even in this age. I push myself up on one arm but donat pull away from hima"instead I pull my right arm out from under the bedding and hold him tight.

aI lost a lot in surgery,a I say slowly. aIf this is part of it, I wish it would stay lost.a aItas gone now.a He speaks soothingly, and I wrap my other arm round him and hold on tight. Heas big, heas stable, heas serious, and heas solid. Serious Sam. I lean my face into the depression at the base of his throat and inhale deeply, once, twice. His arm around me feels good, secure. Security Sam. My ribs shake as I swallow a nervy chuckle. aWhatas that?a he asks.

aNothing,a I tell his throat. Iam awake enough now to realize that Iam not the only one in this house who sleeps naked. But I find that I donat carea"I trust Sam not to try and overpower me, not to do anything I donat want. Sam has somehow stepped across the threshold from being a mistrusted stranger into a friend, and I never noticed it happening. And now I donat want to be left alone here, and itas the most natural thing in the universe to hold on to him and to run my hand up and down his spine and stick my face into the base of his throat and inhale his natural scent. aDo you mind staying? I donat want to be alone.a He tenses slightly, but then I feel his hand running down my back, caressing my spine. I lean into his embrace. He feels so alive, the ant.i.thesis of everything in my blood-drenched memory dream. Iave been sleeping alone and not really touching anyone, much less f.u.c.king, for at least a month now, and therefore it doesnat surprise me in the slightest to find that Iam becoming aroused, sensual, needing more skin contact and more touch and more smell. I lick the base of his throat and move one hand between his legs, and what I find there is no surprise, because heas been living the same life of self-denial too.

aDonata"a he mutters, but Iam not listening. Instead, Iam running my face down his chest, kissing him as I fondle whatas down below, giving the lie to his disinterest.

Samas been holding back because of a lover stranded in the real world without him, and Iave been holding back because of pride and the greedy eyes watching my social score. Weall probably regret this in the morning, but right now Iam drunk on touch. I rub my cheek against his thigh and lick him hungrily, feeling his hands in my haira"

aNo.a He sounds hesitant. I take him in my mouth as far as I can, and he sounds as if heas strangling. aNo, Reeve, please donata"a I carry on sucking and licking and he draws breath to say something and instead gasps a little, and I finish him off with a sense of anticlimax. That was too fast, wasnat it? Then heas standing on the other side of the bed, his back turned and his shoulders hunched. aI asked you to stop,a he says sullenly.

Itas a while before I can talk. aI neededa"a I stop. My mouth is acrid with the aftertaste. aI want you to be happy.a If Iam going to give in and humiliate myself in front of the score wh.o.r.es, the least I can do is throw it back in their faces.

aWell, thatas not the right way to do it.a Heas tense and defensive, as if Iave hurt him. aI thought we had an understanding.a He sidles around the bed and out the door before I can think of anything to say, refusing to meet my eyes, and a minute or so later I hear the shower come on.

Iam completely awake by now, so I pull on my bathrobe to go downstairs and make a mug of coffee by way of a subst.i.tute for mouthwash, because thereas no way Iam going to go into the bathroom while Samas busy trying to rinse my saliva away. Iave got some pride left, and right now I donat think I could look at him without yelling, What about your self-control, eh? He moons incessantly over this amazing lover he met outside the polity, but heas not too proud to let me f.e.l.l.a.t.e hima"until afterward, when suddenly Iam an un-person. I could really hate him for that. But instead I sit in the kitchen with my cooling coffee, and I wait for the noise of the shower to cease and the light upstairs to go out. Then I tiptoe back to my bed and lie brooding until near dawn, wondering what possessed me. In the end, I resolve not offer him any intimacies ever again, until Iave had a chance to spit in his imaginary loveras face in front of him. Finally, I sleep.

THE next day I donat stir from bed until Sam has left for work. Once Iam up, I phone the Chamber of Commerce. The zombie who takes my call sounds only marginally sapient but agrees to send a taxi for me the next morning. I go outside and jog up and down the road until Iam exhausteda"which takes a lot longer nowa"then take a shower. I spend the rest of the day in the garage trying to do some more work on the crossbow, which is not going well. I wonder why Iam bothering: Itas not as if Iam going to shoot anyone, is it?

I leave Sam a half-defrosted pizza and a note explaining how to cook it in the kitchen. By the time I come indoors itas dark, Samas holed up in the living room with the TV on, and I have no trouble sneaking upstairs and going to bed without seeing him. Itas easy to do, now that weare both avoiding each other.

I am troubled in my sleep. Itas a different bad dream, nothing like as vivid as the slaughterhouse nightmare, but even more disturbing in some ways. Imagine youare a detective, or some other kind of investigator. And youare looking for people, bad people who hide in shadows. Theyave committed terrible crimes but theyave altered everyoneas memories so that n.o.body can remember what they did or who they are. You donat know what they did or who they are, but itas your job to find them and bring them to justice in such a way that neither they, nor anyone else, can forget what they did and the consequences of their actions. So youare a detective, and youare walking through twilit polityscapes hunting for clues, but you donat know who you are or why youare charged with this mission. For all you know, you may even be one of the criminals. Theyave made everybody forget who they are and what they did. Whoas to say that they didnat do it to themselves, too? You could be guilty of a crime so horrible that it has no name and everyoneas forgotten it, and youall find the irrevocable logic of detection drawing you to place yourself under arrest and hand yourself over to the courts of a higher power. And youall be tried and sentenced for a crime you donat understand and donat remember committing, and the punishment will be beyond human comprehension and leave you walking the twilit polityscapes, a ghost shorn of most of your memories except for a faint indelible stain of original sin. And youall be there because youave been sent looking for a master criminal by way of atoning for your past actions. And youall be on their trail, and one day you will find them and, reaching out a hand to grab them by the shoulder, youall find yourself looking at the back of your own heada"

I wake up sweating and sick with my heart pounding in the night, and there is no Sam. For a moment I feel defiant and angry at his absence, but then I think: What have I done to my only friend here? And I roll over and wash the pillow in bitter tears before dawn.

But the next day I start my new job.

8.